JOYN MACHINE

ABOUT JOYN MA­CHINE

Joyn Ma­chine is a col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­ject based on a con­cept by An­dreas Pick­er and Si­mon Deeg. Its pur­pose is to de­vel­op an in­no­va­tive web-aug­ment­ed ma­chine for the pro­duc­tion of cus­tom wood con­struc­tions with milled joints. An easy-to-use all-in-one ma­chine, a stan­dardized join­ery sys­tem, an app-based in­ter­face, and an on­line plat­form for the exchange and eval­u­a­tion of de­signs are com­bined to cre­ate a new kind of tool. Estab­lished wood­work­ing meth­ods, in­clud­ing in­dus­trial-scale pro­cess­es, are refined and brought to­gether in an in­tel­li­gent sys­tem that is flex­i­ble and us­er-friend­ly. Us­ing a log­i­cal­ly in­ter­linked sys­tem of tools and ma­te­rials, dig­i­tal de­signs can be turned in­to com­po­nents that are then as­sem­bled in­to ob­jects and struc­tures.

WOOD AS SEMIFIN­ISHED PROD­UCT

Wood is an in­ex­pen­sive, eco-friend­ly, stan­dardized, al­most uni­ver­sal­ly avai­l­able ma­te­rial with a high tac­tile qual­i­ty. Our goal is to make wood, with all its pos­i­tive at­tributes, more func­tio­n­al. The vari­ous shapes of wood­work­ing joints can be milled in­to the ends (or any other part) of a piece of stock (vari­ous grades of struc­tu­ral di­men­sio­n­al lum­ber), cre­at­ing strong joints be­tween wood com­po­nents with­out me­t­al fas­ten­ers. The ma­chine al­so makes it easy to man­u­fac­ture com­plex wood con­struc­tions us­ing para­met­ri­cal­ly de­signed joints. It can be used in al­most any wood­work­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, from fur­ni­ture build­ing to con­struc­tion fram­ing.

RAPID MAN­U­FAC­TUR­ING

Joyn Ma­chine con­nects wood­work­ing to the de­vel­op­ing field of rapid man­u­fac­tur­ing. This type of com­put­er-aid­ed fab­ri­ca­tion (rapid pro­to­typ­ing, 3D print­ing) has brought about tech­no­log­i­cal and qual­i­ta­tive shifts in the re­la­tion­ship be­tween con­struc­tion and pro­duc­tion, giv­ing rise to new ap­pli­ca­tions (such as mass cus­tomiza­tion) as well as new us­er groups (DIY, mak­er move­ment). In view of th­ese de­vel­op­ments in other ar­eas, our pro­ject aims to fa­cil­i­tate a method of con­struc­tion that is new in the field of wood­work­ing. Users can build their own cre­a­tions on the ma­chine with the help of a de­sign tool, or they can use pre-pro­grammed in­struc­tions from the web­site. As in other forms of rapid man­u­fac­tur­ing, the in­ter­play of hard­ware and de­sign pro­cess, in com­bi­na­tion with on­line re­sources, gen­er­ates a mul­ti­tude of unique new ideas and prod­ucts that can be shared and trad­ed on the web. Joyn Ma­chine meets the DIY mar­ket’s grow­ing de­mand for in­ex­pen­sive, us­er-friend­ly machines for com­put­er-aid­ed con­struc­tion and build­ing, putt­ing in­dus­trial pro­duc­tion meth­ods within reach of the am­bi­tious in­di­vi­d­u­al craftsper­son. But it al­so seeks to ex­pand the op­tions avai­l­able to pro­fes­sio­n­al users by en­abling them to re­lo­cate pro­duc­tion on any scale, from mass to small-batch to one-off. In terms of com­plex­i­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and pre­ci­sion, Joyn Ma­chine’s pro­cess log­ic and com­pact de­sign al­so al­low it to be used out­side the shop – for ex­am­ple, at con­struc­tion sites.

IN­DI­VI­D­U­AL PO­TEN­TIAL

As “pro­sumers” (in the sense of con­sumer/pro­duc­ers), in­di­vi­d­u­al Joyn Ma­chine users can re­pli­cate ex­ist­ing con­struc­tions, mod­i­fy them with their own ideas, add refine­ments, and fab­ri­cate them on the spot. Us­ing the shar­ing web­site, they can doc­u­ment their de­signs and make them ac­ces­si­ble to other users. Once cre­at­ed, any de­sign can be re­pro­duced as of­ten as de­sired. This form of se­rial pro­duc­tion can be car­ried out on mul­ti­ple machines in a sin­gle lo­ca­tion. The fin­ished prod­ucts are long-last­ing, eco-friend­ly, and ex­treme­ly durable, and can be made com­pliant with the most com­plex codes and reg­u­la­tions for wood con­struc­tion.